Wars are raging, nations are threatening nations, extreme weather and devastating floods are striking communities around the world, and earthquakes continue to shake populated regions. Political instability is spreading, geopolitical tensions are rising, and millions increasingly sense that the world has entered a period of unusual turbulence.
And now, on Thursday night, millions of Americans will look up and watch the moon turn red.
Beginning on the evening of August 27 and continuing into the early hours of August 28, Earth’s shadow will move across the moon in one of the deepest partial lunar eclipses most Americans will ever see. At precisely 12:12 a.m. Eastern Time, the eclipse will reach its maximum, with approximately 96 percent of the lunar surface covered and only a thin sliver remaining illuminated.
As the eclipse deepens, much of the moon could take on shades of copper, orange and blood red. Nearly one billion people across the United States, Canada and Latin America are positioned to see the entire eclipse, weather permitting, making this far more than an obscure astronomical event visible only from some distant corner of the world.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would simply be a spectacular night in the heavens. But these aren’t ordinary times, and whenever the moon turns blood red against the backdrop of war, natural disasters and geopolitical upheaval, Christians understandably begin thinking about Bible prophecy.
We’ve Heard This Language Before
Thousands of years before anyone used the modern phrase “blood moon,” the prophet Joel wrote, “The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come” (Joel 2:31). The Apostle Peter repeated those words in Acts 2, connecting the imagery of the heavens with the prophetic Day of the Lord.
Then there is the unmistakable language of Revelation 6:12: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.”
Jesus Himself warned that the period surrounding His return would be accompanied by extraordinary celestial events, declaring in Luke 21:25 that there would be “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars.”
So when millions of Americans walk outside Thursday night and see a reddish moon hanging over the nation, the question is inevitable: Are we witnessing a sign of the times–or just another eclipse?
The answer requires biblical discernment rather than either sensationalism or dismissal.
This Blood Moon Isn’t Revelation 6
There is nothing scientifically mysterious about why Thursday’s moon will appear red. During a lunar eclipse, Earth passes between the sun and moon, while Earth’s atmosphere filters the sunlight passing through it. Shorter blue wavelengths scatter more easily, while more red and orange light continues through the atmosphere and reaches the lunar surface–the same basic phenomenon responsible for brilliant red sunsets.
Astronomers can predict eclipses far into the future, which means this eclipse didn’t suddenly appear in response to today’s wars, earthquakes or political crises. Christians have repeatedly made the mistake of assigning specific prophetic significance to eclipses, comets, planetary alignments and other astronomical events, only to watch predicted dates come and go without the expected prophetic fulfillment.
Biblical watchfulness should never become prophetic sensationalism. Yet there is an opposite mistake that deserves just as much caution: becoming so determined not to sensationalize prophecy that we begin ignoring what prophecy actually says.
The Bible really does say that extraordinary signs are coming in the heavens.
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